A sea-going, waterborne vessel—sometimes called a boat, yacht, ship is designed to move about a body of water in which it is buoyant, according to the direction of the captain when operating under its own power and using its own propulsion and directional parts, features, and adaptations. A vessel that is not operating under its own power, however, will move upon the body of water in accordance with the currents, waves, and winds. Accordingly, any non-operating vessel that is not on dry land must remain anchored, moored, or tied to a dock at all times, lest it go ‘anywhere the wind blows’.
To facilitate tying a boat to a dock, modern vessels and docks generally have “cleats”, which facilitate attachment of a rope which is known as a line. To secure the boat, one or more lines are secured between a cleat on the dock and a cleat on the boat, and are subsequently released on one or both ends to free the boat from the dock. While a variety of different techniques exist for tying a boat to a dock, including to allow for changes in current, wind, and tide while the boat is docked and left unattended, such techniques and configurations are beyond the scope of the present discussion.
Especially when a departing boat intends to return to the same dock, either one or more lines is left secured to the dock, or one or more lines is kept tied to the boat cleat—ready to be brought onto the dock to tie to a dock cleat. When the boat returns to the dock, then, the captain, deckhand, or other occupant of the boat must somehow either retrieve the line and bring it on board so that it can be secured to one of the cleats on the boat, or get the line onto the dock to secure it there. Since a boat is limited in its directional ability as power is reduced, docking can be clumsy, and having at least one line between the boat and dock creates a valuable link that allows the boat to be quickly stabilized. The obvious difficulty, however, is retrieving the line from the dock to secure the boat to the dock (or vice-versa), while the boat is still unsecured and remains subject to winds, currents, and waves. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that as the boat approaches the dock, since propulsion is typically greatly reduced or stopped to avoid striking the dock with the boat, and as a result, the controlling the boat enough to even retrieve the line can be quite difficult.
With larger maritime operations, line handling can be simplified by the presence of multiple deck hands and often dock hands who can ‘throw a line’ to/from the boat. Lines for such vessels can be extremely heavy and by themselves can cause injury. With smaller, especially recreational boating, however, the captain is often alone to not only pilot the boat, but also make the connection with the dock, while avoiding having the boat strike the dock and also avoiding ‘falling in the drink’. Even when another occupant is present, they are often required to jump off the bow to grab the line (or carry and tie the line) and perhaps also manually prevent the boat from striking the dock—once again carrying a significant risk of injury.
For a recreational boater, then the prospect of later returning to the dock and dealing with docking, can be enough to prevent the boater from even leaving the dock! When currents or winds are significant, or forecast as significant, just the thought of docking later can be enough to have the boater think twice about an excursion, or to distract from enjoyment of the same.
Over the years various devices have been developed, proposed, and attempted to aid the boater with docking. While these units may be suitable for the particular purpose employed, or for general use, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present invention as disclosed hereafter.